For quite a while, I’ve wanted to compare these two bottlings. For those who don’t know, Lapierre bottles the same wine, their regular Morgon bottling, with and without added SO2. Kermit Lynch only sells the “N” (no sulfur) on the west coast (maybe only California?), so it’s not as easy to find out here. Well, recently, I acquired a bottle of each bottling from the 2013 vintage. They rested in my basement for a couple of months before I got around to opening them. Since the difference is only marked with a letter on the back label, I was able to taste them without knowing which was which. Here’s what I found.
Wine 1 showed elegant, restrained red fruit, with a bit of earth and a touch of brett. It seemed a bit more wild/funky than I remember most Lapierre being, but little enough that I still found the wine very enjoyable.
Wine 2 was more expressive, with more concentrated flavors and more fruit. I was surprised to find a slightly different fruit profile, with some black fruit (black cherry mainly) chiming in along with the red fruits I found in wine 1. This one seemed cleaner in some way.
I’m sure you’ve guessed that I suspected wine 1 to be the unsulfured version. I liked both wines quite a bit, but I preferred wine 2 by a good margin. It seemed more pure in a way. Boy, was I surprised when I turned the bottles around. That’s right; wine 1 had an “S” on the back, and wine 2 had an “N”. Go figure. All I can think at this point was that the low dose of SO2 muted that wine just a bit, while the more overt fruit character of the non-dose wine covered up the subtle funky character that was likely in there somewhere. Of course, it could have been bottle variation, but the results still surprised me.
Yep. That’s the allure of no sulfite. Brighter, lighter feeling, more expressive, cleaner. That’s when everything goes right.
Having done a number of side-by-sides it really depends on the wine and the taster where the preference is. We’ve had different wines range from around 80-20 to 50-50 to 20-80 in general preference. Sometimes a darker fruit character, heavier feel, toning down of somewhat obnoxious aromatics, and partial muting of primary fruit can be preferable.
But, the very best of no sulfite wines have a dimension to them that you just don’t get in other wines.
Thanks, very interesting!
I presume the wines have seen the same amounts of sulfur during fermentation?
The differences are thus only due to the effects of sulfur on bottle maturation?
If the absence of sulfur does not lead to some taint in transportation, the difference you describe is pretty much what one would expect. Non-sulfured wines have brighter fruit.
I started experimenting with no Sulpher adds pre-ferment and in side by side fermenters found very similar data to your tasting experience. Even to the added presence of black fruit in a profile typically red fruited in nature(with SO2).
In some of the experiments this more open expression remained through the life of the wine in the cellar, while some definitely faded with time.
Thanks, very cool post. I’ve often wondered the difference, but never taken the chance given the trickiness of shipping into Florida. Almost sounds like comparing a Franc de Pied to a non, which is cool to do side-by-side with Chinon.
The wines have no sulphur added before or during fermentation so the only sulphur they will see at those stages are the small amounts naturally produced in the fermentation process.
Indeed the only difference between the two is the sulphur added at bottling to conserve the wines if they are going to experience temperatures above 14oC [IIRC] or the customer asks for it i.e. N or S.
Marcel used to make three differently sulphured versions from zero up but Mathieu has only produced 2 in more recent years.
As others have said, it’s not surprising that the fruit would be more subdued with more sulfur. I wonder, though, if what came across as funk/brett might instead have been a bit of reduction.
Interesting indeed. Of course it’s very difficult to base cause/effect relationships on an n of 1 - it would and should be interesting to do this same thing multiple times with multiple folks. Or even the same group but say 6 bottles of each in the same sitting . . .
I understand how they can be similar, but I am pretty confident that it wasn’t reduction. Besides brett, I think there may have been a little bit of contamination from lactobacillus/pediococcus. I saw that so strongly in multiple bottles of the '09 (seemingly an entire batch or portion) that they smelled and tasted like sour beer. I don’t mean a little hint, I mean very much like having beer in the glass.
Oh, I agree. That’s why I mentioned that it could have just been bottle variation. Still, it makes for some interesting conversation, and I’m glad people with more experience than I have doing this type of comparison are chiming in.
Nice! I got mine from NY, but it wasn’t a Kermit Lynch import. I understand his caution up until now, but it should be fine to sell to trusted merchants who will care for the wine.